Paul's Update Special 1/27

Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss

Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss Kim Scott cut her teeth as a manager at Apple and Google, and now helps create great leaders as an author and co...

Kim Scott, co-founder of Candor, Inc., has built her career around a simple goal: Creating bullshit-free zones where people love their work and working together.

The single most important thing a boss can do, Scott has learned, is focus on guidance: giving it, receiving it, and encouraging it. Guidance, which is fundamentally just praise and criticism, is usually called “feedback,” but feedback is screechy and makes us want to put our hands over our ears. Guidance is something most of us long for.

At First Round's recent CEO Summit, Scott shared a simple tool for ensuring that your team gets the right kind of guidance — a tool she calls 'radical candor.'

It sounds so simple to say that bosses need to tell employees when they're screwing up. But it very rarely happens. To help teach radical candor — this all-important but often neglected skill — to her own teams, Scott boiled it down to a simple framework: Picture a basic graph divided into four quadrants. If the vertical axis is caring personally and the horizontal axis is challenging directly, you want your feedback to fall in the upper right-hand quadrant. That’s where radical candor lies.

“The vertical axis is what I call the ‘give a damn’ axis,” Scott says. “Caring personally makes it much easier to do the next thing you have to do as a good boss, which is being willing to piss people off.”

That’s right, the horizontal axis is what Scott calls the “willing to piss people off” axis. Challenging others is difficult for many people; saying anything short of positive feels impolite. But once you become a boss, it’s your job to do be equally clear about what’s going wrong, and what’s going right.

I would argue that criticizing your employees when they screw up is not just your job, it's actually your moral obligation. Radical candor, then, results from a combination of caring personally and challenging directly. But what does it look like in practice? Scott has created an acronym to help people remember:

HHIPP: “Radical candor is humble, it’s helpful, it’s immediate, it’s in person — in private if it’s criticism and in public if it’s praise — and it doesn’t personalize.”

Four key things that any manager can do to create an environment of meaningful guidance:

1. Find opportunities for impromptu feedback
2. Make backstabbing impossible
3. Make it easier to speak truth to power
4. Put your own oxygen mask on first

Today's Rapid Pace of Change Demands Modernized Leadership ChiefExecutive.net | Chief Executive magazine

Today's Rapid Pace of Change Demands Modernized Leadership ChiefExecuti... Over the past decade, the pace of change has accelerated through technology, and we’ve developed a much deeper u...

To drive relevant and sustainable change within their organizations, CEOs must help their executive leadership team (and their direct reports) overcome long-outdated leadership practices. Adopting these 8 shifts could serve a means to modernize your leadership.

1. Engage and Empower…instead of Command and Control. Leaders must focus on inspiring and informing employees to improve the myriad of ongoing decisions being made across their organizations.
2. Learn and Adjust…instead of Strategize and Plan. Leaders need to stop viewing customer insight as a set of market research projects, and treat it as part of the core organization to enable a continuous flow of customer-insightful decisions.
3. Detect and Disseminate…instead of Amass and Review. Companies must tailor market insights for each part of the organization; providing the right information at the right time to fuel the decisions being made by employees with different roles.
4. Observe and Improve…instead of Measure and Track. Leaders should spend time understanding how things are getting done.
5. Purpose and Values…instead of Goals and Objectives. Leaders must take the time to communicate the organization’s mission and its values.
6. Strengths and Appreciation…instead of Problems and Solutions. Leaders must consistently find ways to show their appreciation for employees’ strengths.
7. Culture and Behaviors…instead of Process and Projects. Leaders need to invest more effort in the culture they create, which will shape how employees think and act.
8. Experience and Emotions…instead of Price and Features. Leaders must add customer emotion to their corporate vocabulary.

If you’re a corporate leader operating under outdated management assumptions, then it’s time to change your approach. While traditional management thinking may have succeeded in the past, future leaders will need to adapt to these 8 critical shifts to become a modernized leader.

The Serious Business of Sandboxes

The Serious Business of Sandboxes By David Clarke Constructing places where employees can collaborate, improvise, and watch one another work can spur creativity.

Whether in media or design or industrial machinery, the need to foster and harness the creativity of individuals working in teams has never been more urgent. The problem, however, is that large, complex, multinational organizations are often much better at stifling creativity than fostering it.

The best place for your business to create and “make tomorrow” — is in a sandbox. Think about it. Sandboxes are venues that bring together all kinds of kids in an open but finite space that encourages exploration and interaction with little threat of harm.

The idea of a sandbox provides an apt metaphor for the type of collaboration and interaction that should take place in the open, communal office spaces, virtual meetings, management retreats, and other places where we work now. When you create successful conceptual sandboxes in the workplace, you can eliminate organizational silos, allowing your workers to better understand what their colleagues do and more fully grasp what your business is trying to achieve. 

To make the most of the experience, every sandbox needs four key features:

1. Connectors. Every major challenge has three critically important lenses that must be aligned in the right way in order to help usher in true innovation and industry disruption: the business, experience, and technology lenses. A successful connector can bring in specialists who can focus those lenses to forge the products, services, and experiences of the future. Put another way, they are the people in your workforce who can seamlessly connect the dots between business, tech, creative, and experience.
2. Framing. Real-world sandboxes need well-defined frames — otherwise the sand leaks out. In the business context, sandbox designers have to construct a virtual and conceptual frame by setting the proper context to solve for your business issue.
3. Space. The biggest value sandboxes hold for organizations is that they enable employees throughout the workforce to see, feel, and operate in a collaborative state. When companies replace meetings and phone calls with an environment in which employees can actually participate in how their colleagues work, employees broaden their understanding and acceptance of different individuals’ skills.
4. Speed. According to PwC’s January 2016 U.S. CEO Survey, 78 percent of U.S. CEOs are somewhat or extremely concerned about the rapid pace of technological change. Too many organizations still operate under the handoff method, where different parts of the workforce are pulled into projects at different times. The beauty of the sandbox approach is that it provides a holistic vision of the product road map, allowing organizations to move at the speed of tech.

In today’s mobile- and social-first world, as we adapt to fundamentally different ways of working, organizations will need to mirror the dexterity and fluidity of their workforce. Though the sandbox is as old as play itself, its principles of interaction, collaboration, freedom, and safety are perhaps even more applicable to digitally native workers than to their predecessors. The sandbox approach has the potential to become the center for how successful companies operate, ultimately eliminating the need for innovation projects or investments and simply spreading innovation throughout the organization.

Paul's Update Special 1/20

Bring in Outside Experts to Mentor Your Team

Bring in Outside Experts to Mentor Your Team Make them part of the brain trust.

Many of the benefits of agile talent have been widely reported. But a benefit that has received less attention is the contribution they can make as mentors to an organization’s full-time staff. Tapping into your outside experts to help in the development of internal employees is a valuable way to address the needs of both. 

A practical framework for mentoring is based on the career stages work of Gene Dalton and Paul Thompson, former professors at HBS. Their research has found that high-performing professionals tend to transit through four distinct stages of development:

1. Apprentice: Helper and learner; establishes a reputation for trust, teamwork, and cultural congruity.
2. Individual contributor: Builds recognized functional expertise; makes a significant independent contribution; demonstrates accountability and ownership for results.
3. Mentor/coach: Contributes through others as a formal manager, an idea leader, a project owner, or an informal employee developer.
4. Sponsor/strategist: Sets or influences strategic direction and important decisions; exercises power on behalf of the organization; prepares future leaders.

This type of entrepreneurial mindset is extremely helpful and is very often lacking among full-time employees who don’t have significant market or competitive contact.

How can an organization encourage the mentoring of employees by their critical outside experts? We suggest five steps that leaders can take.

1. Establish Informal Coaching Relationships
2. Provide Channels for Sharing Knowledge
3. Involve Experts as Part of the Brain Trust
4. Engage Experts in Providing Developmental Feedback
5. Connect with Experts’ Networks 

We live in a time when keeping up technically and professionally is increasingly important and difficult. Mentoring is one of the important tools that managers have to contribute to the development of their team. Utilizing agile talents as mentors and coaches is a way to multiply the value of an organization’s investment in outside experts.

Infinite Solar Power Technology Could Completely Change Our Future

Infinite Solar Power Technology Could Completely Change Our Future According to an energy expert, the proliferation of solar energy is going to allow for cheap and effectively inf...

“The promise of quasi-infinite and free energy is here,” Thierry Lepercq, French energy company Engie SA’s head of research, technology, and innovation declares, in an interview with Bloomberg. His arguments aren’t based on any environmental concern. Rather, he takes the perspective of price.

Lepercq isn’t alone in seeing the price potential of renewables, particularly solar energy. The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently published a report showing how solar power now costs cheaper than fossil fuels.

Renewable energy technology, especially solar and wind, has made exponential gains in efficiency in recent years, enough to achieve economic competitiveness and, in an increasing number of cases, grid parity. For instance, the unsubsidized, levellized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility scale solar photovoltaic, which was highly uncompetitive only five years ago, has declined at a 20% compounded annual rate, making it not only viable but also more attractive than coal in a wide range of countries.

This is all because, as mentioned above, we have seen an increased use of solar energy. Innovations thrived. Nations and private corporations were both in on it, too. We are seeing the construction of large-scale solar energy infrastructure.

Indeed, quasi-infinite and free energy is well on its way.

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2017 Global Risk Report of the World Economic Forum

http://www.marginalia.online/the-world-economic-forum-launches-global-risks-report-2017/

In this year’s annual survey, some 750 experts assessed 30 global risks, as well as 13 underlying trends that could amplify them or alter the interconnections between them.

Patterns persist. Rising income and wealth disparity and increasing polarization of societies were ranked first and third, respectively, among the underlying trends that will determine global developments in the next ten years.

Similarly, the most interconnected pairing of risks in this year’s survey is between high structural unemployment or underemployment and profound social instability.

The environment dominates the global risks landscape.

Society is not keeping pace with technological change.

Paul's Update Special 1/13

The Neuroscience of Trust

The Neuroscience of Trust Management behaviors that foster employee engagement

Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance.

About a decade ago, in an effort to understand how company culture affects performance, I began measuring the brain activity of people while they worked.  I identified eight management behaviors that foster trust. These behaviors are measurable and can be managed to improve performance.

1. Recognize excellence.The neuroscience shows that recognition has the largest effect on trust when it occurs immediately after a goal has been met, when it comes from peers, and when it’s tangible, unexpected, personal, and public 
2. Induce “challenge stress.” When a manager assigns a team a difficult but achievable job, the moderate stress of the task releases neurochemicals, including oxytocin and adrenocorticotropin, that intensify people’s focus and strengthens social connections. When team members need to work together to reach a goal, brain activity coordinates their behaviors efficiently. 
3. Give people discretion in how they do their work. Being trusted to figure things out is a big motivator.
4. Enable job crafting. When companies trust employees to choose which projects they’ll work on, people focus their energies on what they care about most. 
5. Share information broadly. Only 40% of employees report that they are well informed about their company’s goals, strategies, and tactics. This uncertainty about the company’s direction leads to chronic stress, which inhibits the release of oxytocin and undermines teamwork. Openness is the antidote.
6. Intentionally build relationships. The brain network that oxytocin activates is evolutionarily old. This means that the trust and sociality that oxytocin enables are deeply embedded in our nature. 
7. Facilitate whole-person growth. High-trust workplaces help people develop personally as well as professionally. High-trust companies adopt a growth mindset when developing talent. Some even find that when managers set clear goals, give employees the autonomy to reach them, and provide consistent feedback, the backward-looking annual performance review is no longer necessary. 
8. Show vulnerability. Leaders in high-trust workplaces ask for help from colleagues instead of just telling them to do things. Asking for help is effective because it taps into the natural human impulse to cooperate with others.

My team also found that those working in high-trust companies enjoyed their jobs 60% more, were 70% more aligned with their companies’ purpose, and felt 66% closer to their colleagues. And a high-trust culture improves how people treat one another and themselves. Compared with employees at low-trust organizations, the high-trust folks had 11% more empathy for their workmates, depersonalized them 41% less often, and experienced 40% less burnout from their work. They felt a greater sense of accomplishment, as well—41% more.

High-trust companies hold people accountable but without micromanaging them. They treat people like responsible adults.

Finding hidden leaders

Finding hidden leaders Organizations should learn to hunt, fish, and trawl for the best talent.

Searching for the next generation of business leaders represents one of the biggest headaches for any organization. To identify promising candidates for promotion who are not on the list of usual suspects, companies need to apply more rigor and better tools than many currently use. The rewards can be significant. Expanding a company’s leadership capacity is not only valuable in itself; it can be inspirational for the hidden leaders who are elevated and for those around them, bringing further benefits.

Most organizations we know have more leadership power within their ranks than they recognize. In our experience, there are three common reasons why leaders get overlooked, none of them easily overcome by the leadership-harvesting approaches prevalent at many organizations.

The first explanation is size: in large organizations, it’s easy for hidden talent to stay hidden or be drowned out by the noise of complex organizational processes. Another reason why promising future leaders go unnoticed is bias in the selection process. Finally, there is the problem of the narrow top-down lens that senior leaders often use when looking for leadership talent.

Finally, there is the problem of the narrow top-down lens that senior leaders often use when looking for leadership talent. Finding employees with the qualities to be tomorrow’s leaders requires more than harvesting talent and should include what we call “hunting,” “fishing,” and “trawling.”

By acknowledging that overlooked leaders can be identified through more proactive efforts, executives should be able to reshape their leadership culture, increase the available talent, save on recruiting costs, and raise retention rates.

How Your Company Can Meaningfully Improve Diversity In 2017

How Your Company Can Meaningfully Improve Diversity In 2017 By Cale Guthrie Weissman It's not enough to simply say you want your organization to be more diverse. Here are tangible ways you can ...

As organizations begin think about the next year’s goals, here are some ways to help bring about a more diverse workspace.

STEP 1: ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS NOT A PIPELINE PROBLEM

Numerous studies show that there is an abundance of women and non-white people with applicable skills.

STEP 2: BE MINDFUL OF YOUR TALENT SOURCING

Employers can approach new sources—different universities, for instance—to find candidates outside of their networks.

STEP 3: TRY (AS BEST YOU CAN) TO AVOID BIAS

Remove as much bias in decision making as possible. Recruiters can do their job blindly so that only qualifications can be seen. But avoiding bias goes beyond just hiring. It’s making sure that people within a company are aware of how they present themselves to each other. To help with this, companies can bring in trained counselors to lead bias training exercises.

STEP 4: LOOK CRITICALLY AT YOUR NUMBERS

While companies may be hiring people from divergent backgrounds, what’s important to know is whether they are fostering their success. One of the biggest problems non-white and non-male employees face is a non-inclusive culture. So other statistics like employee retention reveal whether or not companies are succeeding.

STEP 5: UNDERSTAND WHAT IT ALL MEANS

The most important thing to emphasize is that this isn’t just for appearance. Cultivating a diverse workforce has business effects. A McKinsey study concluded that diversity drives better results.

The U.S. Media’s Problems Are Much Bigger than Fake News and Filter Bubbles

The U.S. Media’s Problems Are Much Bigger than Fake News and Filter Bubbles And no one knows how to solve them.

The presidential transition has been marked by the same attitude: if only the media were less distractible and headlines more accurate. Thinking that way is tempting, but it misses the mark. The media did exactly what it was designed to do, given the incentives that govern it. It’s not that the media sets out to be sensationalist; its business model leads it in that direction. Charges of bias don’t make the bias real; it often lies in the eye of the beholder. Fake news and cyberattacks are triggers, not causes. The issues that confront us are structural.

The analysis here is not concerned with which candidate deserved to win or whose message was “better.” It is concerned with examining the media and its coverage, identifying its root causes, and understanding what we should expect going forward.

The Supply Side I: Connectedness Matters More than Content or Money

In the last two contests in which Hillary Clinton has participated, the 2008 primary and the 2016 election, she won on most of these metrics — and lost the elections.

Two developments bear noting. First, and most obvious, traditional media is no longer the only way to spread the word. Second, and even more significant, social media is distinct from traditional media in that it connects users to each other. This means that messages can spread far more easily and quickly.

The implications are threefold:

1. The best product doesn’t always win
2. Bigger marketing budgets may not pay off
3. Expectations matter - people want to be on a winning platform

The Supply Side II: Ratings Determine Which Messages Get Amplified

Recycling the same message won’t earn amplification. And in today’s media environment, even “normal” news doesn’t break through information clutter; big, surprising events do. The media’s bias toward big events stems from three features of its economics:

1. Fixed costs. The cost of covering a golf tournament doesn’t depend on whether Tiger Woods plays. But if he does, ratings — and revenue — double
2. An advertising-based model. The main metric by which news outlets are judged is the ratings they command, the page views they get, or the copies they sell
3. Spillovers. A big event in media and entertainment doesn’t just draw viewers to the event itself; it also entices viewers to consume follow-on or related products

Each of these factors, individually, means that ratings or page views — the size of the audience — matter a lot for media firms. The outcome is a “ratings bubble” within which companies operate.

In political campaigns, big events arise in one of three ways. The first is sporadically and unpredictably. The second is through name recognition. The third is by being created. 

The Demand Side: Consumers Consume What They Want To

Our preexisting preferences largely determine what media we watch. Add it all up, and the implications are profound.

• First, we watch what we believe, but what we don’t watch, we don’t believe
• Second, negative coverage can have unintended consequences. Hear a source you don’t trust, and when it reports something inconsistent with your beliefs, you’ll discount that thing even more
• Third, and for the same reason, charges of media bias can actually help an outlet

Particularly sobering is that all this has nothing do with the much-lamented problem of fake news. Get rid of all verifiably fake news, as Facebook and others certainly should, and filter bubbles, polarization, and charges of media bias will remain.

Where Does This Leave Us?

Three forces combine to create the media coverage of political campaigns we observe today: connected media, which spreads messages faster than traditional media; fixed costs and advertising-reliant business models in traditional media, which amplify sensational messages; and viewers’ news consumption patterns, which leads to people sorting across media outlets based on their beliefs and makes messages they already agree with far more effective.

Even if we could somehow push “reset,” we would have to expect the same sort of coverage that we got. The problems are too deep and structural for anything else.

What’s the way forward? There are no easy answers to the question. Voluntary efforts at restraint by well-meaning journalists won’t work, because of advertising-based business models and competition. Eliminating fake news won’t change the fact that voters ignore ideas contrary to their beliefs. Media companies, their regulators, and their customers — all of us — have to look for ways to confront these challenges. The stakes could not be higher.